At Worlds End
by Musing Soul
Summary: It is all over. Everyone is dead except the two of them. Naruto walks the battlefield of his dead friends and commrads before that final confrontion at worlds end. T for violent death and description there of. Character Death warning


A/N: Well this is an idea i had a while back and wrote down but just now got on the computer. I will warn you that some of the deaths i describe aren't pretty and are rather violent. You have been warned.

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At Worlds End

Silently the Rokudaime Hokage looked out at his village. Rather what was left of it. The only standing building was the Hokage Tower at the top of which he now stood.

The Hokage was tall, about six one, and had long blonde hair that framed his face. His eyes were piercing blue and seemed to read your soul when you looked into them. Just under his eyes were six marks much like the whiskers of a cat or dog, but in this case they were the whiskers of a fox, three to a side. They were perhaps the most noticeable feature of his face short of his deep mysterious eyes. This man was Naruto Uzimaki-Namikaze, son of Minato Namikaze, the Yondaime Hokage and legendary Yellow Flash, and Kushina Uzimaki, the Rokudaime Hokage, Crimson Flash, former Demon Brat and container of the nine tailed fox.

Slowly the Hokage began to descend the crumbling ruin that used to be a tower. It was the only standing building in the village but it held that title on a whim and a prayer. He passed his office, which now only qualified for the title of hole in the wall, and continued downwards. He at last came to the area where a door used to be and sighed. There was no door now only a still smoking hole burned there by a pair of overpowered Uchiha Fire Techniques.

Slowly he exited that hole and looked over the remnants of a battle or more accurately battles. It had all began three weeks ago; the first attacks had come then as hundreds of thousands of shinobi resurrected by Kabuto. The first attacks had come from long range and forced the defenders of the village to come out onto the fields. Every single one of them had been frozen with shock as they saw loved ones and friends killed in previous battles brought back to life and staring at them with a single intent: kill.

The sight of loved ones attacking the village had paralyzed the defenders, the remnants of every other village, with terror. Naruto knew that he couldn't order them to fight the Zombie Army as it would only lead to more deaths. Perhaps most surprising was that the other four Kage left the decisions of battle up to him

Every Hyuuga in the village that could use the _Eight Trigrams Sixty Four Palms _had been recruited to fight the undead army. They had combined killed about three quarters of the attackers, roughly eighty or so thousand, before they were practically wiped out. Literally. Of about a thousand able bodies at the beginning of the first week from the Hyuuga clan there were less than a hundred by week's end. Naruto couldn't order them to fight any longer having lost many of his own friends during the battle.

Then utterly out of nowhere the Killer Bee had offered to finish the resurrected off. Bee, despite being the container of the Eight Tails had little chance as the undead army was bolstered by the entire Akatsuki along with the remnants of hidden sound.

Still he had insisted and reluctantly they let him go. Bee had wasted no time transforming into the Eight Tails in seconds and leaving a path of destruction behind him. He made a beeline for Kabuto and quickly ended the medic's life. At that gesture the remaining resurrected had fallen dead as they lost their source of chakra. However it had been the end of Bee as well when Diedra, Kisame, Itachi, Sasuke, and Sasori all ganged up on him. The man had fought his hardest but in the end was defeated and taken away to be sealed. Not without some victory however as Sasori perished in the fight. That lead to a short reprieve from battle in fact almost a week.

Naruto looked over the battle before the hole he had just left. It was a gruesome sight mutilated bodies and blood lay everywhere. A man could be seen with his own intestines shoved down his throat. Naruto knew that he had fallen victim to Madara's Tsukonimi. All in all around him lay the bodies of over a hundred ANBU members who had fought to keep Madara back from the tower. In the end they had one but it cost every one of them their lives. Off to the side was another battle where twenty more had fallen against Kisame. Naruto sighed. They had lost over one hundred and twenty fighting, Kisame, Madara and two unknown members who Naruto had killed.

He examined the battle with the shark first. Kisame had taken down two ANBU Captains and seventeen ANBU all in one go doing incredible damage to all the corpses. The Captains had been bitten clean in half and the organs that used to occupy the chest cavity now covered the ground. The rest of the ANBU had died in less grizzly fashion save one who appeared to have his testicles ripped off and literally shoved down his throat. The sight nearly made Naruto heave in shear disgust. Kisame himself didn't look much better that his victims. He was missing his arm, a leg, and had a whole chunk of his left side ripped clean off before he was finally killed. Naruto looked down at Kisame's body which was covered by another corpse this one looking like a wax statue. It Yamato.

Yamato's corpse was perfect and unharmed evidence of the fact it was not the man on whom he now rested who killed him. No Yamato had died killing Kisame but Kisame had not killed Yamato, rather Yamato was the end of himself. Naruto didn't know what jutsu the wood user had used, all he knew was that it had managed to kill both him and Kisame and neither seemed the least bit dead.

The last however could not be said for everyone who died particularly those who died in battle against Madara, in evidence by the fact that most every corpse was missing a limb or in multiple pieces. Some had died from blood loss and loss of chakra and others were hacked in half by the insane katana wielding Uchiha. He no longer had his katana however that had broken when he thought it could stop a full power Rasenshuriken. It didn't. However before Naruto had joined the battle before the tower Madara had fought these hundred ANBU to pieces. Two of them lay in five pieces each one a victim of a different elemental jutsu. Another was chopped in pieces of a density and consistency of sushi. A forth was decapitated and had his head shoved face first up his ass. A self fulfilling prophecy of a taunt, Naruto recalled.

Shuddering at the gruesome corpses of his ANBU, Naruto continued onwards. A few dozen steps were all it took to bring him face to face with the remains of Gai, Kakashi, and Lee. They had fought themselves literally to death against Madara. That battle which had precursed the fight before the Hokage Tower had been tremendous leaving craters and burning destruction all across the remains of the village. Lee had died first Naruto remembered from watching the fight from an unknown jutsu. He had just finished up a combo on the ancient madman and was landing when Madara struck. A literal void was ripped in the air and consumed Lee who attempted to run in terror. The void had snapped shut and literally consumed everything that wasn't inside of it. As a direct result Lee had lost everything below the shoulders and was dead in a matter of seconds. He didn't even have enough blood left in him to form a puddle. Naruto could tell that whatever the hell the jutsu was it had hurt like hell considering Lee had screamed in utter agony throughout the experience and his face was contorted in ways that no human should be capable of doing.

His sensei, role model and whatever the else he might have been were simply dead. Naruto snorted at that thought. Simply dead was an understatement. Gai had been trying to kill Madara without using his gates but had been forced to do so. Naruto remember Gai opening them one at a time until he had literally opened the last three all at once. Madara had been amazed that Gai had done so but taunted him for the last second of his life, as Gai made every attempt to beat the living shit out of him, a grand total of about thirty seconds, about how his sacrifice was useless. Gai had only landed one hit after that taunt but he made his mark.

However the sight of the previous two did not incite grief in Naruto like the next sight did. His old sensei lay dead on the ground in a number of pieces. As blood from the battles above the current location ran down the village in two huge red sluggish rivers, it tried to carry away the parts of Hatake Kakashi. The Cyclops's right side was on Naruto's left side currently and the other side on the opposite. By side he meant an arm and a leg. Kakashi's head had been disintegrated by what Naruto thought to be the Chidori and the rest of him was, well, just gone.

Naruto bowed his head in shame. He was the Hokage, his job was to die for his village and defend it, and not let his villagers fucking kill themselves so he could just die later damn it! He could smell the smoke of his burning village, the village he had failed dismally. No Kage should let his village be reduced to a hell hole over the course of three weeks. He shouldn't be able to taste the blood of his citizens in the air around him and the smoke of their burning corpses shouldn't cloud the air with their smoke. A mist hung in the air, a fine red mist, a mist made of blood. The blood of his village, the blood of every villager, slowly sending him to whence the mist came; hell.

Slowly Naruto wandered farther down the village in a meandering path. Absently he recalled some of the previous battle of the war with the Akatsuki and the Hidden Sound Village. Kumo and Iwa had gone first. In fact more than just gone, they had literally been wiped straight off the map. Iwa was destroyed by an army of Sound Ninja backed by the Akatsuki in a battle that lasted most of four days. The numbers advantage was overwhelming and the Tsuchikage had elected to flee before everyone in his village was killed, and being allied to Kumo at the time fled there. The only reason was that there was some very bad blood between them and Konoha at the time. Kumo had gone in similar fashion and fled to Kiri. The Mizukage had then asked for help from the other villages. Naruto and Gaara the leaders of the only two uninvolved villages at the time had agreed and sent a sizable chunk of their forces to help out.

SO Mist had become the first battle of the united villages. Of the remnants of Kumo and Iwa, only perhaps ten thousand total, all had chosen to fight. Mist could supply roughly forty thousand ninja themselves, and Leaf and Sand added enough to bring the grand total to about sixty five thousand. All that against the near unstoppable power of Kabuto's resurrected ninja numbering just over a hundred thousand along with a score of Akatsuki members. That was before the battle.

However it was those first battles that Naruto would always remember. It was the first time his ninja went to war without in their ranks and he hated it. He was used to fighting with his people not standing around and watching them get butchered.

That day Naruto determined that everyone who said that the Bloodline Purges of Mist were bloody had been proven wrong. Those first days of battle had been the true Bloody Mist. The mists around the village had in fact been turned a sickening red color from the amount of blood in the air and on the ground, frankly it looked like something out of a horror movie.

All five of the Kages had stood on the defensive walls of the Hidden Mist village and looked down onto the plains as carnage ensued. Naruto would forever remember the men who returned to the village wounded.

He remember the corpses best. Every single bloody corpse. He could still see them, even the one from other villages, lying on the stretchers before him, missing limbs eyes or organs with features mangled by the pains they suffered before death. One particular man he remembered the best. He was a Cloud ninja about five foot eight with long brown hair a paler than average complexion and sea green eyes but that was put to an end quickly. On the third day of battle when the Kages joined the fight he had been fighting beside Naruto when something, no one knew what, had simply carved off his entire chest. Naruto hadn't even realized the guy was dead until the end of the day. The Hokage could still see his eyes and they seemed to ask, why? That question still gave him nightmares.

Naruto shivered he could still see the eyes of every single one of the dead bodies, the bodies of his ninja, ninja he had failed had gotten killed by dragging them into this thrice damned war. Naruto shivered as he remembered the last few days of battle in mist.

(**Flashback Starts Now**)

_Naruto stood on the ruins of the walls surrounding the Hidden Mist Village and looked out at the desolate battlefield. Before him the sun was slowly setting over a cratered plain that was a virtual sea of blood which shimmered, a crimson sea where the bodies of the dead seemed to float in their own blood. He could sea bodies of people who died for a lost cause, some of them younger than ten dead from brutal maiming and other equally grisly methods of death._

_ Naruto tore his eyes from the horrifying scene before him, he felt like he was looking at the sunset of hell and it frankly unnerved him greatly. He was greeted by the sight of his fellow Kage as they looked out over the dead bodies' shinobi and civilian alike many of them gutted like fish. The irony was sickening._

_ Gaara looked impassive but an undertone of anger was still there in his eyes. A looked positively livid but wasn't rushing into anything. Mei was the most openly enraged since it was her village that was being massacred. More accurately had been massacred. Naruto stepped back and stood in the middle of the line of them taking his customary place. For some reason the youngest Kage had been elected Leader and always appeared with the others flanking him like guards. Together they stood five pillars of power and hope, against the hellish sunset._

_ "Isn't the sunset supposed to be a thing of beauty?" Mei asked suddenly. Naruto chuckled. _

_ "Is it supposed to be? Yes. However now it merely is a symbol of another day that we lived another day of death and destruction. These next days are going to some of the most important." His voice was like steel and held no hint of anger but it blazed within him fueled by the Kyuubi, despite all these years the bastard fox still wanted out._

_ "For some reason staring out at that sun feels like looking on the eyes of a demon or perhaps the devil himself." Mei whispered, "An eye taunting me with the knowledge that I brought this upon my village and every one of these deaths is my fault." The other Kages didn't speak for a long time after that._

_ At long last Naruto broke the silence, "That sun is a demons eye Mizukage-dono, and a horrible one at that." He said no more. Those who needed to understand it did. Once more silence overtook the five. Naruto sighed slightly. The five of them, the strongest from their villages, chosen leaders had to bear an unimaginable burden that those who selected them could never imagine, and now it showed. He felt like the world bore down on his shoulders along with the death of every one of his ninja._

_ The sun had set so that you could only see a tiny sliver of it that sliver blending seamlessly with the bloody field casting a hellish light across the ruins. Naruto bowed his head. So much death for just two people. It would never fail to amaze the lengths that Madara was willing to go for the simple sake of his own deranged dreams._

_ "We are going to have to flee this village." The Tsuchikage spoke finally after what appeared to be a great deal of deliberation. "Our defenses are destroyed and the village in ruins. We have lost any advantage we held a week ago and without a doubt will be overrun shortly." _

_ "Where would we go?" A challenged, "Your village is in ruins." He would have said more but Gaara interrupted him._

_ "His village is nothing more than a giant smoking hole in the earth. Your village, "Here he gestured at A "Is gone as well wiped off the map by Madara as well. If we are fleeing Mist now then that leaves Konoha or Suna." Neither of those addressed looked pleased with the Kazekage's attitude towards the destruction of their villages but let it slide for the time being._

_ Naruto groaned and decided he should intervene before they began arguing. "Suna." He said simply. The Tsuchikage made to interrupt but Naruto foresaw his argument. "While there we have the constant defense of Gaara manipulating Sand, along with the naturally harsh desert will make it more favorable to our side. Add to that the fact I can create virtual maelstroms of sand with wind and we have excellent defenses to if nothing else wear down numbers before we flee to Konoha." His words obviously swayed Mei but not the other two. _

_ "What about the fact that that Suna has little escape routes and is half a fucking continent away?" Demanded the Raikage. Naruto turned to him with a glared that had cowed the great Kyuubi no Yoko and said flatly._

_ "We are going whether you like it or not." At that all four of his counter parts gulped. Naruto hardly ever got mad but when he did it wasn't pretty. Last time he destroyed a whole battalion of Sound all on his own in less than ten seconds with only three jutsu. With a sigh the five of them started scheming._

_(_**Flashback is now over)**

Naruto stepped over the burned body of a seven year old child as he approached were the Academy used to stand. Now all that was left was a pile of burning wood and bricks. Dozens of children lay burned to death by various Raiton jutsu along with a few who took a serious hit from some kind of fire jutsu. Likely the work of Itachi or Sasuke.

A few steps farther and several more mangled corpses latter he found Asuma and Kurenai dead. Asuma dead by having his arm blown off and a hole where his heart used to be, likely the Chidori or Rakiri techniques, either way it was obvious that he had died defending Kurenai since she was laying dead beneath him also pierced by the fatal attack. Naruto felt tears well up in his eyes as he looked at them laying dead before him like that, so helpless against a foe many times stronger.

The guilt pressing down on him felt all the worse. He was the Hokage; it was part of his duties to defend these people not get them fucking killed. Tears fell down his face as he walked onwards.

It wasn't long before his path brought him to the dead bodies of Itachi and his brother. Naruto still didn't know what the hell Madara was thinking when he paired those two up. Sasuke and Itachi and in the middle of the village and battle simple attacked each other without mercy. The battle had begun outside the village and raged into and then across the ruins leaving behind craters, black fires that still burned five days later and general death.

Naruto paused in his wandering to look as Sasuke's corpse. "You know teme, I really hoped you might see the light but obviously I was wrong. Rot in hell." With that he continued.

A moment later he stood were the old village wall had been. Now it was just a scorch mark. He sighed. Just one week ago he had stood here in this very spot repelling wave after wave of foes. That had been the third week of brutal combat.

In only three short days only four thousand shinobi remained of a previous total of ten thousand or so. Another three days and the village were in ruins and only about five hundred could still fight. There wasn't a medic left to heal the others. They would either live or die of the injuries they had sustained that was up to nature now.

Only a day ago he and those who lived had attack the Akatsuki in the dead of night pushing them back and doing grievous damage. Naruto could see as he walked the corpses of Hanabi, Konohamaru, Neji, and Tenten all of whom died in battle with Zetsu and for a brief time Hidan. Naruto gulped and looked at that field. He could see the corpse of the plant user which was riddled with over a hundred weapons. Neji was nearby lying in the crater of his own Kaiten, likely he had held Zetsu while Tenten struck.

He moved onwards and found the bodies of Kiba and Shino or at least what was left of them. They had battled Kohan and been literally suffered death by a thousand paper cuts. Both of them fell without victory but bought enough time for Hinata to sneak up behind and attack without mercy. Kohan had no clue what the hell hit her as she died.

Naruto had perhaps the center stage battle against Pein but the Rinnengan had no chance against the deadly Rasenshuriken along with the ultimate form which he used to destroy the real Pein in the end.

Still walking he passed the dead figures of twenty ANBU, Tsunade and Hidan. The immortal had fought a good fight and taken all the ANBU with him before Tsunade used the Shinji Fuijin and took him with her to the grave. Naruto paused for a moment. "Good bye baa-chan." He whispered and continued onwards.

A hundred feet ahead he found four bodies around one man. However he was only looking for Gaara. Gaara and his fellow Kage had fallen in battle against Kakazzu. That could only be called battle royal as the fight was one of the strangest ever. It was nothing but sheer Ninjutsu power being traded at incredible speeds. He looked down at Gaara for a long moment.

"Good bye Gaara…Tell your sibling that I am sorry." He managed to hold in his tears although it took effort.

A dozen paces farther brought him to two generations of Ino-Shika-Cho and the death there of. The legends had bought Naruto, injured and weary, time to flee the battle field. They had fought but in the end a single kunai had ended them all.

Silently weeping Naruto plodded onwards. So many dead so many gone so many lives ended before their time. Naruto remembered the sight of a nine year old academy students torn asunder by Madara without mercy, in fact the man had laughed as he ripped them to pieces and let their blood fall down him in rivers. He remembered a Gennin last in his class trying to kill Kisame; he was eaten by sharks. The list however when on and on for ever.

Naruto walked onwards through a sea of bodies and blood, through an ocean of death and sorrow. Searching for the answer to the question posed by the corpses but instead finding only more questions.

Every pair of dead eyes seemed to ask the same question to which Naruto had no answers. That awful question, "Why Hokage-samma, why did we have to die?" Naruto still had no fucking clue, why did they have to die just to satisfy the wants of some screw the fuck of madman?

Then suddenly a voice broke upon his thoughts. "A valiant effort girl but you will join your clan in death!" the voice of Madara rang out over the battlefield. Naruto snarled in anger that was the voice of the man who had started this whole damned war.

With a single motion practiced so many time times it seemed second nature, he drew a single kunai and let in fly upwards. A moment later he appeared atop the hill before him looking down at Madara and Hinata who had obviously just gotten beat.

Naruto absently wondered why Hinata was here she was injured and needed to rest not challenged century old Uchiha. She had been back in the village when he left. Obviously it wasn't' the case. He watched from the hill top and Madara made a few hand seals that he knew almost by heart now, Sasuke's favorite jutsu from his Gennin days.

He didn't hear Madara call out his jutsu as he began to run down the hill all he saw was the fireball erupt and fly true. White hot fire, fire hot enough that ground under it turned straight to glass that raced towards Hinata with speed even Naruto couldn't dodge.

The fires engulfed her and instantly burned the flesh straight off her body. In less than a second Hinata had been reduced to a skeleton and then only a second after that she was dead melted into oblivion.

Naruto arrived just as the flames died down. "You should have let her go Uchiha." His voice was cold and hard. Even as he spoke Naruto began making hand seals he had over two hundred to do and wanted a serious head start.

"Let her go? Where is the fun in that?" Madara demanded. Naruto stared at him as he made seals slowly deliberately and careful to make every single one of them perfect.

"There is nothing fun about war Uchiha if you think war is nothing but a game then when life catches up you will die and that is that." The young Hokage said coldly "War is something that is of only death and pain Uchiha."

Madara grinning sadistically, "That was a good answer boy but you don't understand, I live for this, this is m purpose, to create a world without war by war, a world after my own image!" Madara's insane laugh rent the air until Naruto cut across it. "It is you who does not understand Madara. You took the cowards way out, Uchiha, and brought shame to your clan. You brought nothing but death and ruin, you, like the snake, tired to live forever. IT is indeed you who does not understand, Madara Uchiha, if you think that the world will shape itself to your image without care. Do you really understand humans so little? You don't understand teme, now shut the hell up!" Naruto thundered. His voice carried power like only a Kages can and that power not even Madara could deny as he fell silent for a moment.

Naruto finished the entire hand seal sequence at last and grinned. Madara however reeled back in terror. "So we now stand at world end Madara, we are likely the last surviving beings after our little war. So shall we dance?" Naruto asked.

Madara made a hand seal but Naruto shouted his jutsu at long last, _**"Dead Demon Consuming Seal!" **_And with that declaration Madara lost his smile rapidly fading to a look of horror.

Between the two hovered the great form of the Death God extending his hand for Madara's soul. As he grabbed it he turned to Naruto who offered a hand with a sad but resolved smile.

The blonde could almost see the Shingammi smile as his last coherent thought was, _At least I can tell those who died I know the answer now, the only pity is that I learned it at worlds end._

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_A/N: Alright there you have it. All feedback is appreciated as long as it is constructive. Flames will be ignored or returned if i am in a bad mood. Either way, please review_  
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